The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn that Canonical designers have created an Ubunto tablet in time for the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 event.

Word on the street is that several Canonical employees have been seen with the first Ubuntu tablet to run the Ubuntu Touch operating system. Technologically it is not much of a stretch from what Canonical can do already. The Touch operating system is working in several Ubuntu Phone devices.

The tablet is being made by the Spanish outfit BQ which already has a partnership with Canonical to deliver two Ubuntu Phone devices. The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition and BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition. It looks like this partnership was widened to include tablets.

We knew that Canonical was working on implementing support for X11 apps on its Ubuntu mobile operating system. This will allow users to run any graphical software that is currently available in the Ubuntu repositories.

It is not clear yet who will make the announcement about the new tablet or when a device is actually going to appear. At MWC BQ is likely to be talking about Ubuntu convergence and the next-generation of the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, which will be based on the forthcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS OS, due for release on April 21, 2016.

What is expected is that the BQ Ubuntu tablet will be the recently announced Aquaris X10, which boasts a 64-bit MediaTek MTK 8163 Quad-Core processor, up to 1080p 10-inch display, 2GB RAM, and a 7,280 mAh battery.

Canonical has given up trying to compete with Dropbox and has shut down its Ubuntu One service. The move that will kill off its streaming music service.

Writing in her blog CEO Jane Silber said that if Canonical wanted to offer a service it would have to compete on a global scale. For Ubuntu One to continue it require more investment than Canonical are willing to make, she added. Rather than compete with other cloud services that routinely offer substantial amounts of free storage, the company has instead decided to focus efforts on its operating system.

Storage and music are no longer available for purchase from the Ubuntu One Store starting today. Existing customers can use the service until June 1st, while stored content will be available to download through July 30th. Annual subscribers, meanwhile, can expect a prorated refund soon.

Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth wants everyone to abandon proprietary firmware code because it is a “threat vector.”

Writing in his blog, Shuttleworth said that manufacturers are too incompetent, and hackers too good for security-by-obscurity in firmware to ever work. Any firmware code running on your phone, tablet, PC, TV, wifi router, washing machine, server, or the server running the cloud your SaaS app is running on is a threat, he said.

“Arguing for ACPI on your next-generation device is arguing for a trojan horse of monumental proportions to be installed in your living room and in your data centre. I’ve been to Troy, there is not much left,” he moaned.

Shuttleworth wants the industry to use Linux and avoid firmware that has executable code. He writes: “Declarative firmware that describes hardware linkages and dependencies but doesn’t include executable code is the best chance we have of real bottom-up security.”

Oracle’s Sun Java JDK packages are to be removed from the Ubuntu partner repositories and disabled on users systems after Larry Ellison ruled that the retiring the ‘Operating System Distributor License for Java, means Canonical no longer have permission to use it.

The change will affect Ubuntu 10.04 LTs, Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 users only. Those who have ‘sun-java-6? package installed on their system will see it removed via a future software update. It is not clear when this will be yet.

Canonical are saying that anyone requiring the software will need to switch to open-source alternatives. This can be found in the Ubuntu Software Centre or by manually installing the Java packages available through the Oracle web site.

OpenJDK, which until now has been the open-source alternatives to Java, will now become its official implementation. Oracle is using OpenJDK as the basis for their own future releases.

The problem is not Oracle trying to stick one to the Open Source movement. There are shedloads of security issues present in the versionof Java available through the Ubuntu partner repositories. Canonical just thinks that the security risk was so severe that it is easier to kill it off.

A security update for the Sun JDK browser plugin will disable the plugin on all machines. Ubuntu’s Marc Deslauriers wrote in a mail to the Ubuntu Security Mailing list that its actions will mitigate users’ risk from malicious websites exploiting the vulnerable version of the Sun JDK.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth has decided that the next release of the Linux operating system, Ubuntu 11.04, will use Unity as the default desktop interface.

While based on GNOME, it is Canonical's own take on what an interface should look and act like. Shuttleworth said that "users want Unity as their primary desktop" and that Ubuntu had "A lot of work to do around windows management but that it would become the default" when they're sure that it will work.”

Ubuntu Unity will default to either a single window, single foreground application on netbooks, or a multiple windows, multi-foreground interface on a desktop or laptop. Users can still use the GNOME desktop or the closest thing GNOME has to Unity, the GNOME Shell if they really want. Shuttleworth is sure they won't.

Canonical have released Ubuntu 10.10 yesterday which also happened to be the 10th day of the 10th month. The new OS release seems to be focused on lower resolution netbooks, with a better interface, 2GB of free online storage, and even multi-touch support.

However after the last major update, this version of Ubuntu looks a bit tame. The installer has been revamped, though the changes are for the most part cosmetic. Some menus appear to have changed. Unfortunately, the actual install process still means that you have to dump everything onto a single partition. Which is something other versions of Linux do not require.

When booted up, 10.10 doesn't look radically different from the previous release it does have a number of very subtle improvements to the default theme. Application windows have smoother gradients, window buttons have been enlarged and refined, and the default Humanity icon set has seen a slight makeover.

The most noticeable change in Ubuntu 10.10 is the Ubuntu Software Centre, which has a History option in the side menu, showing all package installations, removals, and upgrades by date.

Dubbed Maverick Meerkat the CD sized ISO can be downloaded directly from the Ubuntu homepage. While it is worthwhile if you are using Ubuntu it is not much to write home about.